


Perspective

by crabmoney3



Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Ascension, Baltimore Crabs, Breckenridge Jazz Hands, Charleston Shoe Thieves, Gen, Houston Spies, Unlimited Tacos (Blaseball Team), haha i cried while writing this oops, sad boy hours
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-28
Updated: 2020-10-28
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:13:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27238603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crabmoney3/pseuds/crabmoney3
Summary: Tillman Henderson. Valentine Games. Oliver Notarobot. All players deeply loved when they were Crabs and lost in some way shape or form. All bearing witness to the Crabs ascending without them. How do their journeys pull them away from Baltimore and eventually back together?
Relationships: Tillman Henderson & Valentine Games & Oliver Notarobot
Comments: 6
Kudos: 31





	Perspective

**Author's Note:**

> now that the song's been released i need y'all to know i wrote this while listening to the demo of godspeed from the new garages album on repeat and if you want the full dramatic experience while reading you can do the same https://thegarages.bandcamp.com/track/godspeed

Perspective

By crabmoney3

Tillman Henderson has become unstuck in death. Valentine Games has become unstuck in teams. Oliver Notarobot finds a new home. The three of them, shifting, inching ever farther away from each other, but never forgetting where they’d first come together as they begin, unknowingly, to find their way back.

Think back to where they began.

Oliver Notarobot arrives in Baltimore, greeted with spite by a team spurned by gods. He is nervous. Valentine Games notices. He welcomes Ollie. Tillman Henderson notices. He laughs. “What, worried we’ll find out you’re a robot and won’t let you play?” Val shoots him a death glare.

They warm up to each other. Ollie begins to parse when Tillman is making a joke after hours spent together on the bench between pitching. Neither of them are good at it, but they find joy in the game nonetheless. Tillman heckles Valentine, star of the show, as he steps up to bat. Tillman tries to get Ollie to do the same, but Notarobot just smiles. Val rolls his eyes before hitting a homerun.

The three begin to spend time together outside of the Crabitat. They go for ice cream. They go to Hershey Park. Tillman tries to flirt wherever they are, but most of these attempts end in Valentine getting someone’s number instead. Ollie is happy to be along for the ride.

Then it happens.

Valentine Games has become unstuck in teams. Feedback whines in the ears of our players, and suddenly he is on a flight to Breckenridge after the game. He stares out the window, watching Baltimore disappear below. His hometown mingles with clouds as he moves farther and farther away, wondering what the future holds.

Tillman and Ollie greet Valentine’s replacement. Tot Fox explores the Crabitat, taking a liking to Tillman. Tillman pretends he doesn’t enjoy the affections of this small woodland creature, but he does. Ollie points it out. “Oh shut up, Fleshboy,” he says with a grin.

A month later, Valentine decides to check in on the Crabs. On his friends. Not much can change in that little time, he hopes. He calls Tillman.

“Yeah, Combs was incinerated. RIV to them. Couldn’t have been me, though.”

Valentine hangs up the phone. Only a month, and the Crabs have lost both himself and Combs. The Gameboy in his heart glitches a bit, static scattered across the screen. He stops checking in with Tillman. He keeps writing poetry to Pedro, pen pals since they were children. Poetry makes it all seem less real.

Tillman Henderson and Oliver Notarobot are no longer pitchers, and it is a miracle. Combs’ replacement, Finn James, and Joshua Watson, mayor of Ocean City, are pitching in their stead.

The Crabs are on the verge of greatness. Valentine writes a letter.

Valentine Games and Nagomi McDaniel talk about their time spent in Baltimore and Breckenridge. It’s nice for both of them, to feel a connection to either home together. It seems safe.

Valentine Games has become unstuck in teams. He feedbacks to the Millennials, leaving McDaniel on her own.

Valentine Games has become unstuck in teams. He has been in New York for only a few days, and now he leaves for Houston. Nagomi McDaniel is shelled, and returns to Baltimore. Tot watches Nagomi, back and forth back and forth between Baltimore and Breckenridge, and wonders why she does not get to visit home.

The Crabs win their first championship. The team is elated, and Tillman throws a party to celebrate. He invites everyone. He gets up on the table and makes a fool of himself. He convinces Ollie to join.

Valentine leans in the shadows of the event, uncertain of if he is happy to be home or simply nostalgic. He is so proud of his former teammates. He misses them. He writes them a poem.

Tillman Henderson is still an asshole, and all of the Crabs know it. They love him despite this. Despite him tormenting Oliver, despite his indolent arrogance at Combs incineration, despite it all he is still their teammate. He has still been there since the beginning.

Jokes have meshed so much with Tillman’s life that Ollie can no longer keep track of fact and fiction. He thinks the team knows he is a robot—no, he knows, but is that all right? Kennedy says it is, Brock says it is. But Tillman says he’ll keep his secret. So it is a secret, then? He trusts Tillman. He worries what others will think.

Then it happens.

Oliver Notarobot finds a new home. At the end of season seven, Ollie is traded to the Garages. He moves to Seattle. His circuits rattle with fear. Will they know? Will he be turned away? Tillman’s voice echoes in his motherboard, “What, worried we’ll find out you’re a robot and won’t let you play?”

He lands in Seattle. They immediately call him Ollie-Bot. He freezes, but they do not say anything beyond that. He hears the rest of the Crabs insisting that Tillman was joking, being his usual asshole self. It hurts Ollie that his friend would let him feel such fear.

Luis introduces themselves to Tillman. Tillman only refers to them as “Not Ollie.” Tillman Henderson is left in Baltimore. He is left first by Valentine, then by Ollie. He tries not to let himself get close to anyone else. He turns up the charm—or lack thereof. He plays the part everyone expects him to.

The Crabs know better. They let Tillman act the fool, act the petulant, arrogant, trash-type. They groan, they roll their eyes, they laugh and joke about needing time without him. But that does not stop them from cheering as he hits triple after triple to the point where they name it after him. He knows somewhere, deep down, they love him.

Valentine writes a letter.

Valentine Games has become unstuck in teams. It is season nine. After a long stint with the spies, he once again becomes restless. The only place he’s remained stationary is Baltimore, and so it is time for him to move on. He feedbacks to the Tacos in what was once sunny Los Angeles. He inches further and further away from where he began.

It is a beautifully eclipsed day. Tillman is at third base, distracted while the Lovers are batting. He looks at Nagomi’s shell on first, still so loved by everyone. He wonders why Valentine writes to Pedro and to everyone, but not to him. He wonders why Ollie hardly answers his calls. He thinks about Combs. He thinks about Nora, who he’d tried not to think about for the last seven seasons. He hears the Umpire call a ball on a pitch right down the middle.

“Shit call, Ump,” he says.

The Umpire stares into his soul. It dares him to say more. He can feel his team tense up.

“What are you going to do?” Tillman asks, unable to stop himself. Knowing what’s coming, seeing the train barrel at him head on, standing still on the tracks, unable to drop the act no matter how desperately he should.

“Incinerate me?”

Tillman Henderson has become unstuck in death. For the first time in his career, Tillman is taken from the Crabs. He is no longer in Baltimore. He is no longer with his friends. He is alone. The Crabs go on to the playoffs without him. They leave him behind.

Oliver hears jokes about Tillman’s death being the best thing he’s ever done. Ollie feels guilty. It’s still difficult for him to tell farce from fact.

Valentine’s pen hovers over the page. He hasn’t lost anyone this way since Combs. He hears Tillman’s voice from then in the back of his mind. “Couldn’t have been me, though.” Somehow, Val believed. The Crabs lose the playoffs. Tillman shoots up in the Hall. Tillman shoots up on the idol board. The microphone whines.

Tillman Henderson has become unstuck in death. Eyes barely closed, he is awoken by Jaylen. She reaches out to him and offers her place in his stead. This is the Crabs coming to get him, he thinks. They want me to come home. He takes Jaylen’s hand, and is pulled back to the world of the living.

He awakes in Charleston, surrounded by disappointed Shoe Thieves. He is not home. He is a pitcher again. The Crabs didn’t come back for him. No, of course they didn’t, how could they. They left him behind.

He goes back to playing the part he’s used to. If the Crabs do not need him, he does not need them either. Not Tot. Not Finn. Not Kennedy. Not Forrest. No, he’ll show them how little he needs them.

Tot Fox hits a triple in Baltimore. The team erupts in cheers of a “Tilly Triple” as Fox rounds the bases. Kennedy is having a neutral day. When asked how he feels, he says, “It a pretty Tillman kind of day.”

The Crabs, with two championship wins under their belt, dive into season ten. Valentine remains with the Tacos. Oliver makes music in Seattle. Tillman pitches, and the Shoe Thieves beg the Hall Monitor to take him back. Crabs joke about incinerating him again. Tillman cannot tell the farce from fact.

The playoffs are the Crabs and the Shoe Thieves. Something about this game attracts Valentine. He slips onto a flight to Baltimore to watch. Ollie thinks about how he’d see his teammates. They inch closer to the beginning. Tillman sits in the dugout, the one opposite to where he’s comfortable, the one void of his sunflower seed shells and memories, watching his former teammates. People he called friends for so many years. They win the first game. They win the second. The third begins. Tillman Henderson is supposed to pitch the fourth. It will never reach that point.

The Crabs win.

Then it happens.

Tillman Henderson has become unstuck in death. Valentine Games has become unstuck in teams. Oliver Notarobot finds a new home. And yet, here the three of them are, all in the same place, at the same time, somewhere they used to live and breathe and love and play.

The Crabs have won three championships. They begin to ascend. Tillman Henderson runs onto the field. Valentine yells to him from the stands. Oliver does the same. Tillman runs towards the light opening up, enveloping the Crabs, but not him, never him, when Val catches his arm. Oliver races to meet them. It has been years since they’ve been this close. Val puts his arm over Tillman’s shoulders. Ollie takes his hands. And they watch.

Oliver Notarobot finds a new home in the friends he left behind. He misses them dearly. He watches the Crabs rise, and feels their love and support. He is their good flesh boy, and he knows this. He wishes he could be with them, but he still has a home here. A home in Seattle. A home with Valentine. A home with Tillman.

Valentine Games has become unstuck in teams, but still finds a connection here. He is so proud of all of the Crabs he knew from the beginning. He’s so proud of the ones he had never met. He watches Pedro, a friend from childhood, ascend and thinks of the beautiful letters he may receive some day. He has been unstuck from teams for so long that the Crabs are the only one he still sees as home. He knows he can go anywhere in the world, but somewhere, deep in his heart, he wishes he could still be up there with them. He holds Tillman tighter.

Tillman Henderson has become unstuck in death and his team lives on without him. Up they go, ascending, and no matter how desperately he tries to be with them he can’t. He died. They brought him back to the wrong team. They let him go to the wrong team, and for that they leave him behind. Valentine and Ollie hold him back, friends who left him years before, somehow returning now when everyone else is gone. He is tired of being left behind, so tired. He sinks into the crook of Valentine’s arm and grips Ollie’s hand tighter. He will not be left behind again.

The trio stares up one last time as the glow begins to fade and they are left on the field. They stand there, together, where they first came together, wondering how they could have drifted so far apart, and they wait. They do not know what they are waiting for. But they stand there, holding each other, and wait for their turn to come home.


End file.
